Amidst growing concerns around the impact of the fashion industry and consumer waste, a series of street art interventions have appeared across the country to coincide with #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday. Bill Posters, the pseudonym for the street artist and activist who co-founded Brandalism, has been subvertising ad spaces to draw attention to the negative impacts of consumer waste and fast fashion.

Timed for release on the biggest global retail event of the year, Bill Poster’s latest campaign entitled ‘Waste World’ looks at the true consequences of the world’s rubbish – from clothes to plastics and e-waste – as well as those most affected by it. Inspired by New Internationalist’s latest issue on Waste, the street art installations take aim at brands including Nike, Pretty Little Thing, Apple and Gucci and reveal where large amounts of waste and ‘recycling’ from the western world actually ends up.

“Instead of getting beaten up this Black Friday in shopping malls for a new TV we should probably be paying more attention to where the majority of our ‘recycled’ waste actually ends up. In low-income countries, 93% of global waste is dumped due to inadequate urban provisions. Western countries can’t process their own waste, instead – they sell it to other low-income countries in Asia and Africa. It reeks of colonialism, we are literally taking a dump on millions of less privileged people with our waste” says Posters.

This latest subvertising campaign is also timed to support ‘No Ad day’, an artist led initiative that seeks to remove ads from public spaces across the world on Saturday 24th November 2018. To support other street artists and graffiti writers to take over advertising spaces in cities for No Ad Day, Bill Posters has just published the world’s first pocket sized ‘Subvertising Manual’ with Dog Section Press.